Strangling Match

At his field headquarters in Poland, Adolf Hitler last week retorted to Great Britain's effort to strangle him economically. He signed a contraband list virtually identical with the British list, for a counter-blockade at sea of war munitions and other supplies destined for Allied ports in neutral vessels. With none of his Navy except perhaps 25 submarines outside of the Baltic, this action was a fairly empty gesture except as it affected Scandinavian shipping. First to feel it was Sweden's paper-pulp industry, whose big customers are British newspapers (see p.19).

Meantime the Allied blockade of Germany became impressive. In The Downs from Broadstairs to Dover stretched a long line of merchantmen arrested and anchored pending examination. Aboard each was a guard of British seamen under a junior officer. Two British destroyers and a French gunboat patrolled the roadstead.

One of the first ships held up was the Black Osprey of the Black Diamond Lines, bound from New York to Rotterdam with a mixed cargo. For five days her owners did not know where the ship was. When he did learn, Black Diamond's President Victor J. Sudman protested sharply to the U. S. State Department. In due course the Black Osprey was permitted to clear with all her cargo for Antwerp and Rotterdam, the British explaining that "it was not fully established that Germany was the destination and the items themselves were proved to be unimportant in quantity." Snorted President Sudman: "I imagine the publicity was too much for them."

Less lenient was the treatment given Waterman Steamship Corp.'s Warrior, carrying pebble phosphate and rosin out of Mobile, Ala. Bought & paid for by Germany, the phosphate (5,900 tons) and rosin (600 barrels) were confiscated by Britain, ordered sold at public auction. From the Nieuw Amsterdam were taken two German spies (one of whom attempted suicide), 34 German stewards and sailors. The Dutch Government was allowed to take title to 1,500 tons of copper aboard.

The Ministry of Information announced: "The German wireless has distorted the purpose of the British contraband policy as setting out to strangle neutral trade and bringing starvation and death to old people, women and children. . . . What Britain is endeavoring to do is to prevent the German Government from importing goods ... to prolong the war."

This week the Ministry of Economic Warfare published a Black List of 278 pro-German persons and companies throughout the world with whom British merchants and shipowners are forbidden to do business, subject to heavy penalties.

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